


Consequences of Familial Deception

by mayoho



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Gen, Grief, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Jeff is a fuck up, Male-Female Friendship, season 6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-12
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-05-06 08:47:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5410484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayoho/pseuds/mayoho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Do you remember that time on Family Day all those years ago when Jeff said his mother didn't know he wasn't a real lawyer? Eventually that was going to have to come back and bite him. </p>
<p>Or Frankie does her best to help Jeff deal with his emotional pain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Consequences of Familial Deception

**Author's Note:**

> I was thinking about pulling in fun Jeff Davis anecdotes into Jeff's backstory, like maybe Jeff was a swing dance instructor when money was tight as he was still working out how to fake his qualifications as a lawyer. This happened instead, and I am terribly sorry. One day, I will right something happy (probably, maybe, maybe not). But yay Jeff and Frankie friendship!

Frankie finds Jeff standing in the hallway behind the Study Room. He’d left the Activities Committee meeting rather suddenly to take a phone call. His shoulders are tense, knuckles white where they clench around his phone. She’s in his line of sight, but he’s not looking at her, is staring fixedly at the window out to the courtyard.

“Jeff, are you... alright?” Frankie winces. She hates rhetorical questions but she doesn’t know what else to say; she’s horrible at comforting people. Jeff’s mouth twists, and oh god his eyes are welling with tears.

“Ok. That’s fine. You don’t have to answer that.” She presses a hand into the small of his back, guiding him back into the empty Study Room. She pulls the door shut behind them and draws the nearest set of blinds, trying to create privacy--let Jeff maintain some dignity. He looks like he’d rather bite through his lip than cry where some student might see.

Frankie puts a hand on Jeff’s arm; she must look like Abed--slightly panicked yet detached in the face of someone else's pain but unable to walk away. Jeff either doesn’t notice or, more likely, finds the detachment comforting and crumples into her, hands grasping at her shoulders. He’s heavy and taller than her. Neither of these things should be a surprise. She reaches up, awkwardly rubbing circles between his shoulder blades. Jeff makes a hiccuping noise and sniffs repeatedly. Frankie wonders what this is doing to her hair. She doesn’t care exactly, but it’s something she will need to account for.

After what feels like an eternity but is almost definitely only a few minutes, Jeff pulls away. He turns his back to her almost immediately, so quick she doesn't see his face. It hurts somewhere deep in her core--Jeff feeling like he needs to hide, but she understand the impulse to not show weakness, gives him space as he takes a few deep shaky breaths and rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands.

“Tell me what's wrong. Let me help.” She knows she sounds demanding and unsympathetic. This is why people think she’s heartless, but she trusts that Jeff knows better.

He braces his hands against the back of the chair behind him, ankles crossed, studying the fuzzy, gunky strands where the carpet is peeling away from the wall. It’s a very good imitation of casual, but Frankie knows what Jeff looks like when he’s actually relaxed and he hasn’t quite hit the mark. He exhales loudly.

“My mom’s dying. Brain cancer.”

“Jeff, I’m so--”

He looks at Frankie and the platitude catches in her throat. He’s smiling, but in a way that’s scared, angry, and desperate. Really, it’s more of a dare to the universe; a ‘go ahead, try to fuck me, things cannot get worse’ smile.

“It’s so much worse than that,” Jeff continues, his smiling softening to lose the desperate edges. He’s slipped into a slightly different persona, one that is cold, untouchable, and aloof. Frankie doesn’t think she would have a chance at pegging this as a last ditched effort to keep from crying again without the context. “She has no idea I’m not still a lawyer, no idea I work at Greendale, no idea I can’t afford to pay her medical bills.”

Jeff sounds like a con man lifted straight out of a heist movie, explaining just how clever he is, how much he’s gotten away with, but his smile is brittle again by the time he’s finished speaking. It’s upsetting in a way that his crying wasn’t. Frankie thinks she might cry herself.

“I’ll figure something out. I promise,” she says with all of the authority and professionalism she can muster.

“You don’t--”

“We care about you, Jeff. No one is going to let you go through this alone.”

Jeff bites his lower lip, stares at his shoes, and doesn’t say anything. Frankie walks back to her office, calm and determined now that she know she’ll be able to help.


End file.
